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The God fettered [as in the Kronos Myth] to an unchanging
identity leaves the ordering of this universe to his son (to
Zeus), for it could not be in his character to neglect his rule
within the divine sphere, and, as though sated with the
Authentic-Beauty, seek a lordship too recent and too poor for his
might. Ignoring this lower world, Kronos [Intellectual-Principle]
claims for his own father [Ouranoo, the Absolute, or One] with
all the upward-tending between them: and he counts all that tends
to the inferior, beginning from his son [Zeus, the All-Soul], as
ranking beneath him. Thus he holds a mid position determined on
the one side by the differentiation implied in the severance from
the very highest and, on the other, by that which keeps him apart
from the link between himself and the lower: he stands between a
greater father and an inferior son. But since that father is too
lofty to be thought of under the name of Beauty, the second God
remains the primally beautiful.
Soul also has beauty, but is less beautiful than Intellect as
being its image and therefore, though beautiful in nature, taking
increase of beauty by looking to that original. Since then the
All-Soul- to use the more familiar term- since Aphrodite herself
is so beautiful, what name can we give to that other? If Soul is
so lovely in its own right, of what quality must that prior be?
And since its being is derived, what must that power be from
which the Soul takes the double beauty, the borrowed and the
inherent?
We ourselves possess beauty when we are true to our own being;
our ugliness is in going over to another order; our
self-knowledge, that is to say, is our beauty; in self-ignorance
we are ugly.
Thus beauty is of the Divine and comes Thence only.
Do these considerations suffice to a clear understanding of the
Intellectual Sphere, or must we make yet another attempt by
another road?
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